“A Carolina Indian Boy about 11 years old, to be sold, inquire as the post office in Boston.”

In 1713, the Boston News-Letter carried this advertisement for a “Carolina Indian Boy” to be sold as a slave. The boy had, presumably, been captured during the Tuscarora War.

Hat tip to Derek for this article.

It’s sad to see this in print. I surely wish we knew more about who this young man was, who he was sold to and what happened to him. Most of the captives from the Tuscarora War were taken south and sold in South Carolina or into the West Indies. I wonder how he came to be found in Boston.

2 Responses to Carolina Indian Boy for Sale in Boston – 1713

http://archive.org/details/indianslavery00laubrich
Indian Slavery in Colonial Times within the present limits of the United States (1913)
Author: Almon Wheeler Lauber, Ph.D.
Available for online read or full download, this book has numerous references about Tuscaroras and other Carolina Native-Americans enslaved and trafficked throughout British-American colonies including this from p.187:

“In New England there was no direct traffic with the Indian tribes such as existed in the south. Instead, Indian slaves were obtained by trade with the other colonies, notably the Carolinas. Commerce of this sort, abundant evidence of which is furnished by the newspapers of the time, flourished from the opening of the eighteenth century until some time after the Tuscarora War.”